The Promise of Mentalization-Based Therapy in Treating Borderline Personality Disorder

Thursday, 15 December, 2011

In 2008, Psychiatric News published an article using Mentalization-Based Therapy, MBT, with borderline personality disorder. A working definition of MBT is the use of imaginative mental activity or perceiving and interpreting human behavior in terms of intentional mental states (needs, feelings, goals, purpose) based on research by Anthony Bateman and Peter Fonagy)

The article was based upon the results of a study that tracked patients with BPD who were treated with MBT, group 1, and those who were treated with “treatment-as-usual” plus poly pharmaceuticals, or group 2. The results were intriguing. Those who were part of group 2 experienced more emergency room visits, and were almost 10 times more likely to have attempted suicide five years after hospitalization, initial treatment, and maintenance.

The core components of MBT are attachment theory (relationship with therapist) and developing the ability to observe one’s own emotions and those of other people and to appreciate how one’s behavior affects others. As one patient in one of the studies stated, “It never occurred to me that what I did had an effect on anyone else.”